Windows 7: Expanding Computer Menu

I love the Windows 7 Start Menu, and its versitality astounds me at times, but the inability for the "Computer" menu to be completely expandable cripples quite a bit of my productivity...





This problem does not exist with the personal menu, which quite frankly I could care less about completely expanding.



In general, Windows 7 has seemed to abandon the concept of expanding menus which can actually make things much much quicker at least for me, but I have gotten a separate toolbar working in the taskbar, but this seems inconvenient coming from someone who has always used classic menus on the Start Menu.

Don't get me wrong, I am very GLAD that Windows 7 makes such improvements to the way the start menu functions and in general these improvements have greatly added to my efficiency, but this really cripples someone like me!



Any suggestions?

Hi jc4gavejc,

I'm sure a registry hack will fix this. I'll look into it.

greetz

Here's what I'm thinking.

The only way that I know of accomplishing this is by using a folder with fully expandable menu support that is already in the Start Menu, setting up symbolic links to all your drives (through MKLINK /d) and editing the registry to change the display name of the start menu item.

Don't want to do that if I don't have to though

I'll get back to you when i figured out the right reg key.

Tomorrow because I'm off to bed soon.

greetz

got it working just by using the "Recorded TV" Library and manually adding the drives I have, but...

Doesn't hide drives if they are empty (have a multiformat card reader which displays 8 or so drives in the Library and I use maybe 5 of em, but I like them to be hidden as they are in Explorer when not in use)

USB drives plugged in present a bit of a dilemma as well

still trying to figure out how to get CD ROM support, which this method does not seem to have (gives me an error)

Spend a few hrs fiddling with the registry.

Found the one that changes, and set the subkeys according to the user key.

That didn't change a thing.

So I give up. It's to a minor issue to spend more time on.

Good to hear you found some sort of alternative.

Greetz